


A Pace Unknown To Man

by hariboo



Series: Moments In Transit [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Coda, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 17:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1396210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/pseuds/hariboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLIDER SPOILERS HARD CORE. do not read if you haven't seen it yet, bc I WILL BE SPOILING SOME STUFF. THIS IS YOUR WARNING. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>The notebook is too small for him to get into the details of Bucky’s face. He wants to erase the whole thing. He doesn’t.  “I hate drawing on lined paper.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pace Unknown To Man

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly just coda for the film. No plot, just feelings I had after I left the movie. Friendship junk. Steve and Sam, and Bucky.
> 
> SECOND WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. JUST REMEMBER THIS WAS YOUR SECOND WARNING. Horribly unbeta'd.

He has a notebook. 

The notebook is small, it’s lined, and there’s nothing special about it. He bought it in a little stationery shop near by where he lived. It fits into his pockets and he tucks into jeans, jacket, or sweats when he leaves the house. The reason for this is so he can take it anywhere he goes. 

Natasha shakes her head and smiles when he flips it open and jots down something. Natasha also reads his lists over his shoulders and bring him music on vinyl or box sets of movies.

He fills it up with lists of things to learn about, things to look into, words that people tell him he wants to know. He crosses the words out as he takes them in. As he watches Luke find out who his father is, as he closes a tab on his computer and feels his heart ache over the wars that have ravaged the world, as he listens to Sam play “Trouble Man” for the 100th time and feels soothed. He crosses out names of people he learns about. 

It has no sketches. 

He doesn’t like drawing in it.

He has sketchbooks in his apartment. Simple black things with heavy weighted paper that feels thin against his fingers but takes pencil and pen well. Nat recommended them. She’s one of his first sketches. Not the first, that was someone else. He fills those books up too, but it’s not the same. They’re stacked neatly on a bookshelf after he’s filled them up and he doesn’t open them again. Sam, when he tells him about them, says they all have different ways of coping. Steve thinks Sam is right. 

The smaller notebook is a different thing, with it’s scratched out lists. He doesn’t use it to remember. He uses it to keep track. Small lists of goals you could say. 

Everyone needs something to keep them busy, Sam says, too. Sam runs and cooks. Steve draws and makes lists of all the things he’s missed, of all the things he wants to know about, all the things he wants to discover. With SHIELD gone and HYDRA uncovered like a disease festering in it's core his days have become less busy. He draws a lot more now. He makes more lists, but he still has a purpose. He still has a goal. A single name.

And then he starts drawing in the corners of the lined paper. 

Here’s a truth about himself that makes this important: 

Steve hates drawing on lined paper; doesn’t like how the blue lines intersect with the shape of faces and curves smiles. Makes them look wrong to his eye.

The first time he does it he’s in a cafe with Sam. They’re talking about what to do next, where to look next -- Steve crossed out his and Bucky’s old neighbourhood two days ago -- and Sam stands saying he’s going to the head. Steve nods, flipping his notebook open. He crosses out Rocky IV, because he and Sam watched it last night, and then flips to a page farther in the back.

It’s the only page with the one name on it. It’s the one page he wonders when he’ll able to cross the name out. He’s not sure why he wrote it in the notebook. It’s a whole different thing, but he flipped the notebook open after he got out of the hospital and wrote the name out. A name and a list of places to search and leads that don’t pan out. He wants to cross the name out, but can’t, if it’s in this notebook it’s something that he needs to-- it’s a goal that hasn’t been reached it. It’s not something he’s accomplished yet. It makes his heart ache. 

He doesn’t even notice he begins drawing.

By the time Sam comes back, Bucky’s profile has filled half the small page. The blue lines cut across his face, they make Steve feel melancholy. He’s retracing the bridge of Bucky’s nose as Sam sits back down.

“You’re really good, you know.”

“Thanks,” he looks up from the small doodle. The notebook is too small for him to get into the details of Bucky’s face. He wants to erase the whole thing. He doesn’t. “I hate drawing on lined paper.”

Sam smiles. It’s an easy smile, quick to appear, and wholly amused. It always makes Steve smile back. Sam seems to understand everything Steve doesn’t say. He doesn’t remind Steve of Bucky at all, but Sam just looks at Steve and gets it. 

“You’re kinda a weird one, Steve.”

“Thanks.” He shades absently. 

“So, if you hate it why are you drawing on it?”

Steve looks down at Bucky’s face. This wasn’t the Bucky he saw on that bridge, hard eyes with a war in them, but it’s the Bucky he wants to find again. The one he glimpsed at the edges there at the end.

“I guess I needed to remember who it is I’m looking for.”

Sam sighs and leans back on his chair. “He might not be the same, Steve. When we find him he might not be the same guy you remember. He's been the Winter Solider for longer than he was Bucky.”

Sam’s right, of course. Steve thinks about Natasha and everything she has and hasn’t told him about her time before she joined SHIELD. He’s picked up enough to understand that somethings aren't ever truly forgotten, some things can’t ever be erased. She considered herself a monster and remade herself-- re _forged_ herself into a weapon of her own choosing. She is the Natasha of her choosing now.

He wants to give Bucky the same chance. The Winter Soldier was a weapon. Steve has to believe that he can stripped from the damage done to him and still shine. Peggy used to tell him he just wanted to help people, save people. Peggy always understood him best.

And he’s hoping that James Buchanan Barnes wasn’t erased, not at his core, no matter what new things live within him. He has to believe that his friend still lives inside that weapon. That he can be saved, that he can be _found_. He’s sure it was Bucky that saved him from the water. It couldn’t have been anyone else. That’s enough for Steve to hope with. 

“I just need him to be Bucky. I just need him to remember he knows me.”

“For both your sakes, I hope he does.” Sam nods, pulling out his wallet and dropping a handful of notes on the table. Steve closes his notebook and tucks it back into his jacket pocket, thinks of Bucky’s half sketched faced pressed between the pages like a talisman. He remembers going into the building back in ‘42, knowing Bucky was somewhere in there and planning to save him. It’s the same drive and innate feeling that fills him now. Bucky is alive somewhere, hurting and broken, and Steve is going to get him back. The Winter Soldier pulled him out of the water. Bucky pulled him out of the water. Bucky used to always used to worry about Steve’s swimming abilities. 

“He will.”

Some things can’t be erased. 

-

The Smithsonian is cool inside. It’s warm for him. He knows cold, knows how it can seep into your bones and soul. He still feels cold inside. 

He follows the long line of people heading to the Captain America exhibition and thinks about how easy it would be to kill in this crowd. It’d had to be a quiet kill, quick. Not his preferred style. Not his _encouraged_ style. They always wanted him to make an impact, except when they didn’t, which was not often. He can’t remember all the details, they are shapeless in his mind, memories flashing behind his closed eyes as he rests. Car crashes, explosions, his finger on the trigger. His fingers shaping a history of war. Dark shadows following him around edged with blood.

Here, he’s unnoticed. A ghost unseen. He walks, shoulders hunched, head ducked under baseball hat. He remains unnoticed. 

There is a small group in front of the large glass wall that says James Buchanan Barnes. 

Bucky Barnes. 

That’s what the Captain called him. 

Steve Rogers. 

He knew him. 

Steve Rogers knew Bucky Barnes his whole life. Their story is written on the walls. He stares at this face he sees in the mirror but doesn’t recognise it. The easy smile that just the idea of it feels unnatural. 

The Captain called him by a name he only hears in his nightmares. 

But he knew him. 

And Bucky knows him too. 

This used to be the point they would strap him down and force him to forget. There’s no one holding him now down. Bucky knows him. He knows him. He knows him. The details are unclear but he knows him. There is a pressure on his chest that expands and releases and makes him breath out for what feels the first time in years. 

He does knows him.

But first he needs to know himself, too.

Touching the glass, the Winter Soldier catches his own smile reflected shoddily in the clear glass. It’s Bucky Barnes’ smile.

_Til the End of the line._


End file.
